


The Stars Keep Blazing

by orphan_account



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Drug Use, Healing, Hope, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, No Apologies, Original Character(s), Pining, Sharing a Bed, Sweet, Theo in Denial, hand holding, sad boys, you're in for a ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-27 19:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20953949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Theo still isn’t scared, because Boris is smiling, and he’s here with him, and it’s like meeting him for the first time all over again.(Come to think of it, Boris smiled the most when he was scared.) Theo banishes the thought from his head.Or, the return of the Goldfinch should've meant the end of their story, but instead it starts a new adventure entirely.





	The Stars Keep Blazing

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in 1976, because I always wanted a Goldfinch au that happens in the past. If I messed up any of the Russian words, please correct me. Kudos and comments are always appreciated. Enjoy your read. I hope you love these two idiots as much as I do.

_1976_

He knows he should be scared.

But he isn’t. Mainly, because when a woman with a strangely nasally voice called to tell him the news, he had expected it to be much worse. Maybe a car accident with some old lady and the curly black-haired boy that had stolen Theo’s heart— (no, no that wasn’t right, they were both men now, and Theo definitely wasn’t in love.) Or perhaps some brawl in an alley that usually ended in bloody knuckles and feral grins, had finally gotten the best of Boris. Theo didn’t fight like he used to. Neither did Boris.

But he did love like he would live forever.

He had loved Pippa once, her lovely eyes and her lovely hair, the way she held her hand and whispered his name like a prayer. He had also come to love toothy smiles, beer bottles, Russian books, and shared beds. And god knows that wasn’t Pippa. Not with her perfectly straight teeth and English tongue that couldn’t read a lick of Russian if it killed her. 

He isn’t scared, but his heart begins to pound. Perhaps for another reason entirely, perhaps not. 

The whole time he is on the telephone with the woman, he feels a sort of pressure. Like a hand on his, warm and calloused like Boris’s after a long day. The pressure does not increase, nor does it leave. The choice to visit him is entirely his. To take a trip and fall in deep into a hole he’s only recently climbed out of. To lose himself in black eyes and warm skin and—

To _lose_ those black eyes, and warm skin. That is what would happen. What always happens. To find a part of himself, only to miss it again.

The woman is saying something, but Theo is no longer listening. His mind is a whirl, planning, his heart pounding away in his throat. The woman hangs up on him, and he doesn’t even notice.

_Not this time_, Theo thinks, a little boldly, a little desperately. _I won’t lose you_.

With that, he gets into a taxi. If only to finally be able to put a face to the pressure of the hand on his. 

…

For once in his life, Boris is exactly where Theo expects him to be. 

The woman standing outside of his room, looking more like a homely bulldog than a nurse, directs him inside. Theo feels his throat constrict slightly. Hospitals terrify him. He can’t remember the last time he’s been in one.

New York hasn’t changed. Home never does. But Boris is as much as his home as New York is. Years spent apart have taught him that. He’d been in Pennsylvania for a few years, chasing an opportunity to become a writer. His house in New York had been empty, waiting for him.

He remembers nights where there was nothing but the drowsy light of his computer, and the mind-numbing fog of his cigarette. Nights where he saw Boris in his kitchen, in his living room. In his head, in his _bed_. Never Pippa. He’s beginning to wonder if he ever loved her at all.

Then he steps inside, and he can’t even remember Pippa’s name. 

…

The first thing he thinks is, _this is not Boris_.

The weight on his hand disappears completely, and Theo’s heart skips a beat. He wants it back, longs for it even, and with it the image of a young, smiling Boris, black hair and big eyes, and the largest grin he had ever seen on a person. He wants to shut his eyes before this Boris is scarred into his mind, but it’s too late. Boris is already staring back, and oh—at least his eyes are the same.

Everything else is not.

His face and arms are white—_too white_. His hands are frail and thin, not rough like Theo remembers. He does not look like someone who drinks, or smokes, only looks like someone who used to. Like he belongs on one of those posters that Theo had seen downtown, trying to prevent drugs. Theo had sucked on the unlit end of his cigarette and figured that it was about ten years too late for that.

Despite it all, Boris is still beautiful.

The shine in his eyes practically lights up the whole room, and when he says. “Potter, you dumbass…y-you come all this way?” Theo doesn’t want to hear anything else.

(He tries not to think about the crooked, congested sound of his voice. Or the way the mask on his face covers his lips and nose. Theo feels like Boris is hiding behind some kind of wall, and all he wants to do is pull the real him out.)

“I heard you were sick,” Theo replies, even as he feels anger bubble up at the words. She hadn’t said _how_ sick. But, no, Theo still isn’t scared, because Boris is smiling, and he’s here with him, and it’s like meeting him for the first time all over again.

(Come to think of it, Boris smiled the most when he was scared.) Theo banishes the thought from his head.

“What—” He starts, and then thinks better of it. If he asks that question, he doesn’t think he’ll like the answer. “How—?”

“No, no…not now.” Boris says, shaking his head so furiously Theo is afraid he’ll slam it into the headboard. For a moment his smile disappears, and Theo panics as if _he _had disappeared, and maybe he had, because Boris is not Boris without his smile.

And then he is back, calling out to the nurse—_June-bug, I die of starvation here!_ —and soon someone is running in with a tray of steamed potatoes that makes Theo salivate, and Boris give the woman a wink. Theo’s chest loosens at the bat of his eyelashes, because he would never give his flirting up, not for anything, not for anyone. 

Not even for Theo. 

“Now we talk…yes?” Boris says, his tone dropping off into something shy and hopeful. Theo thinks, not for the first time, that this is not the real him. The Boris from Vegas never looked at him the way he did now, like something from heaven, wicked and wonderful, here to accompany him on a journey to Hell itself.

Theo doesn’t know if that’s where Boris will be going.

Still, he picks up a fork, and leans forward to listen to the song that is Boris’s voice. In all of it’s beautiful, broken melody.

…

The sun comes up one the second day with Theo still slumped in a hospital chair, the light bleeding in too fast, too quickly, every color at once, only reminding Theo of how dull everything is when Boris is asleep, when he’s not there. But when he pries his eyes open, straightening in his chair, he marvels for a moment at the color and Boris (one and the same really), and how alive they make everything look.

So fucking alive. Boris breathes as if the living hurts, and yet he still does. A vision flashes in Theo’s mind of the two them walking alone on a Vegas street, in the middle of the night, but there were lights, and the whole memory is too bright to be real—

“…Theo.” Boris murmurs, maybe asleep, or maybe not. His name on Boris’ lips sounds like a dream. He inches closer, and Boris says, croaky but louder. “Potter.”

“Yeah?”

“Why…why you still here?” Boris says, eyes still closed, as if afraid of the world he’d wake up to. Hospital walls, plain food, and a dreary drowning light—is all that is left for him now. 

That, and of course, Theo.

“Go home to your g-girlfriend, hm?” Boris asks, with an edge in his tone. Theo almost spits back—_how about your boyfriend, hm?_ — and is immediately horrified with himself for thinking of it.

He knows the game Boris is playing, but he doesn’t know how to win. When he mutters, “Can’t. Don’t have one.” It’s almost as if Boris is doing him a favor, and not the other way around. Theo isn’t even sure if his presence _is_ a favor. More like a wrong being made right.

“Y-your wife?” Boris asks, and now his voice is different, eyes beginning to blink open. _Alive_, the word rings over and over in Theo’s mind. _Alive, alive, alive_…

“Don’t talk about her,” Theo says. Boris snorts, and turns over. More like falls over. He reminds Theo of a tortoise that he had seen once on a nature video. Clumsy and weak, almost cute. He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again.

Theo leaves.

He does go home—and immediately scolds himself for giving the title of home to grimy hotels where the shades block out the sky. This hotel is probably one of the worst he’s ever seen (it is New York after all, anything is possible) and he’s seen plenty of things.

He undresses, flopping face forward onto the bed. He feels the pressure again—this time an arm—around his back, and he welcomes it. He closes his eyes for a moment, and feels Boris’s breath on his neck, reeking of booze and God knows what, but comforting all the same. 

He thinks he can hear Boris’s voice, but he isn’t singing some old Russian song, or reading out of a book, the words twining together like their hands to create some sort of strange music. Instead, he can only hear the words that Boris told him last night, weary with illness and what seemed like the weight of the whole damn world.

_“It’s—it’s that disease…you know, the one you get from fucking,” Boris had said, words buried under a hoarse, almost casual laugh that Theo might’ve believed if he didn’t know Boris so well. _

_He was terrified. _

_He laughed again, and the sound was all wrong. “You don’t know? It’s…I-I can’t remember the name.” _

_“AIDS,” Theo said, after a long pause. Silence stretched between them, thoughts bubbling and bursting inside him. “How did you get it?”_

_“…pretty boy from Vegas. Nice face, nice hands…” He paused and looked at Theo with eyes that were dimming every day, eyes that no longer brightened, only scared him to the core. “He look like you, a little.” He said and didn’t seem to notice how Theo’s breath caught. _

_“Strange,” Theo said, carefully choosing his answer. “You didn’t talk about boys much. It was always Kotku with you.”_

_“And it was always…Pippa with y-you,” Boris shot back, not as quickly as he usually did, but it was enough. The two of them exchanged grins, baring teeth. For a second, Theo was certain that they had turned into the boys they had been once, and that if someone walked in, they’d be able to see them again. The true them._

_“I come to New York…few year later.” Boris continued. “Funny, yea? Should’ve come to you…faster. I’m…I just too slow.” _

Theo believes him. Lying on a messy bed in the smoldering pit city he calls home, it feels like everything is slowing, winding down like a music box, until the beat finally stops, and there is nothing but the sound of his own breathing in an empty room.

He has never been so alone.

…

“Potter!” Boris rasps, when he returns. Theo is at the doorway, a book in hand. The last few times, he’d called out like that he couldn’t breathe, and Theo had to run and get someone. 

“…look, that man…” Boris says, pale finger pointed towards the television as if accusing it of something. “Your p-painting…”

Theo looks. The man is gesturing to the framed piece that is The Goldfinch, trapped in mild colors, chained down to it’s awful perch. Theo longs for it, the same way he longs for Boris to fill up that person-sized hole inside him. Theo had known how much seeing Boris would hurt. His wounds are open now, the whole savage mess of him is laid out at the world’s feet. What should happen next is no longer up to him.

Theo turns his attention back to the television when the man with the awful haircut begins to talk about the bomb that killed the artist. “Potter…” Boris says from the bed. Theo’s eyes are still glued to the painting, to _his _painting, when he turns it off. He stretches out an arm to Theo, as an invitation. Theo accepts, and Boris’s arms around him are weak, soft almost like feathers. He is a bird though, isn’t he? When the dream ends, Boris will fly away, leaving Theo behind. Boris had already broken his chains, (broken himself too,) but Theo will still be here, chained down by life. 

Theo relaxes into Boris, hoping that if this is a dream, they will never wake.

…

Time slips away from then. It always does when they’re together. Days merge into weeks, and Boris once again becomes the center of Theo’s universe. It’s as if someone has cut him out from Theo’s dreams, and pasted him where he’s not supposed to be. Theo’s too old to be falling this hard, and he knows it. But he does so anyway.

He likes waking up in the hospital chair with a crick in his neck, and Boris laughing when he lets out a pained groan. Christ, _his laugh._ It’s a shining light in a monotony of phantoms, and Theo is irresistibly, inexplicably, drawn to it. 

_Like a moth to a flame_, Theo thinks with bitter amusement, when he says something funny and Boris puts a weak hand over his.

He can’t think about how the light is fading when he can still focus on how bright it is. He can focus instead on the way Boris keeps bugging him about where he’s hiding his coke—_no way you come all this way without some. I _know_ you Theo—_and what he’s been reading, and what he’s been doing, and maybe Boris wants to hear his voice as much as Theo wants his. 

Sometimes he feels a hand holding his, other times it’s lips on his own. He feels his legs tangled with someone else’s, a mockery of the way Boris and he slept in Vegas. Everything in Vegas seems like a long-gone memory, and soon it’s not even that.

He begins to forget after four months. 

Theo is the first to notice, and he thinks it might’ve been his fault for getting Boris so immersed in their new life. They didn’t mention whiskey bottles, or a boy with glasses lying on the street, or stolen kisses and desperate gasps. They didn’t mention the painting, or the bus that had brought them together, or every other insignificant detail that Theo hadn’t seen as significant until Boris forgot them. 

“Your father, Boris,” Theo urges, not wanting to remind him of a bad memory, but those are the ones that stick the most. He puts a hand to Boris’s face, near a cut that never goes. “He did that, don’t you remember? Hey, remember when I punched you in the face and hurt myself?” He shakes his wrist at Boris frantically. “You-you had to kiss it to make it better.”

“I-I remember…” Boris says, smiling rather sadly. But the words are fake, and so is the smile. Theo doesn’t realize he’s tearing up, until Boris says. “…don’t cry, Fedya.” And oh, that just makes it so much worse. 

Boris is still looking out for him, even when he can’t look out for himself. He would still pull him from the middle of a road or scream at him to run, to save himself, like he did back in Amsterdam. Only he doesn’t remember that, so did it ever really happen?

It did, it did, Theo chants wordlessly. Over and over. It sounds like a prayer.

…

It takes Theo a long time to fall asleep that night, and when he finally does, he dreams. 

_He dreams of dancing. There is some song playing by Simple Minds, the words sound muffled and strange to his ears. Some guy is singing— “Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling”—and Boris is singing too. His hands are entwined with Theo’s, and they are swaying on top of the H in Hollywood and the city stars are shining, lighting Theo up from somewhere on the inside, just like Boris’s eyes and Boris’s voice. He can hear the guy singing again, and Boris echoes his words._

_“Don’t you, don’t you forget about me,” He sings, and they stop and gaze at each other for a moment. Theo can see the whole world from up here, but he can also see Boris, and he chooses to look at him instead. Boris is like Las Vegas. _ _Blindingly bright, something so risky, yet so inviting. He is a game that Theo shouldn’t play, but he’ll do so anyway._

_Boris reaches up to run a hand through his hair, and all at once, his hands turn cold and white when they touch him. Theo stumbles in surprise, and let’s go, but it’s like Superman letting go of Louis Lane when they’re miles in the air. _

_The dream shatters. Boris falls, and Theo does too, because they were the only thing keeping each other upright, the only thing left for each other._

_His landing is soft. Cold desert catches him, and he sinks into it, relaxing into the memory of chilly Vegas nights like an embrace. He turns his head to the side, but does not see Boris lying next to him, all sharp eyes and smiles, whispering in Russian. He reaches out a hand and feels—nothing. _

_He panics. He tries to pull himself from the sand but can’t. He’s sinking, but hasn’t he been sinking for a long time? Since the day Theo left to the day he came back. He’s sinking faster and faster into a quicksand that is weak smiles and dull black hair and he will never be able to come back up._

_“Where is he?” Theo finds himself asking. The sand is halfway up his neck now. The sky above him is full of stars, brutal and clear in a silent night. Boris is not here. He no longer belongs to Vegas, nor does he belong to Theo. He belongs to the sky, Theo thinks. A boy like that belongs to the stars._

_He knows the answer, but still he asks. Begs is more like it. He cries and pleads, even as the sand reaches up around him, eating him alive. He watches the sky and asks once more. “Where is…”_

“Boris!” He gasps, jolting upright. He’s in his hotel room. He tries to focus on something, anything. He realizes he’s shaking and gropes on the dresser for a glass of water. Half of it ends up on his lap, but the coolness is comforting.

He lies back down, and feels disgust welling up inside him. Boris is dyi—_sick, he’s sick_—and all Theo can think about is the boy who is no longer here. He thinks about how much he wanted to come back to New York, only to be disappointed upon his return. There was something missing always.

The phantom pressure curls around his shoulder, so welcome and familiar that he almost sobs. He knows he’s on the precipice of chaos, but he doesn’t know whether he’s free-falling or flying; and what does it matter anyway? There are dead ends all around.

He closes his eyes and sees stars behind his lids until he falls asleep.

…

Boris tells him about his wife and kids—"_Kids?” Theo shrieks. Boris grins— _whenever he is able to remember them. He hasn’t seen them in years.

“That was so long ago,” Theo says, his voice quiet and reverent. Ever since he came to New York, he’s been left with the dragging feeling of being older. The two of them look nothing like they used to. Time and life have altered them completely. But sitting here with Boris’ feet in his lap, listening to his faltering voice, he can think—just for one foolish moment—that nothing changed at all. 

“We’re getting old, aren’t we?” Theo says, but the thought doesn’t bother him anymore. As long as he and Boris fall down that pit together, he is fine.

“Not old…” Boris drawls, words lengthening like years. “J-just older…than before.”

Theo shakes his head, trying not to grin. It is like trying to ignore a fire. He is burning from the inside and outside, and he cannot put himself out.

“You’re practically a philosopher.” Theo says at last. He smiles. 

…

Theo reads _The Idiot _while Boris is asleep. It is early morning. The drab room drowns in watery sunlight. He thumbs through the pages, not reading just staring. At all of the bent edges and messy creases.

Boris had stuffed the book into Theo’s suitcase before he got into the cab. He’d taken the book and Boris’s memory with him to New York. Of course, it didn’t compare to having the real thing.

(But he had that now. Sickness be damned, Theo knew that Boris was still himself. Perhaps it was Theo who had changed the most.)

He watches Boris the way he used to watch him read the book, sprawled across the bed, a cigarette wedged between his lips. Theo watches him and it’s alright, because Boris has never noticed him looking.

(Either that, or he just never bothered to mention it.)

He’s startled from his thoughts, when the door opens and in steps the nurse that Boris likes so much—_June-bug, was it?_ —with a plate of steaming pork. She is the woman that told him the forgetting was normal. So was the slur in his voice, and the fact that he barely talked. As well as the bruises welling up on his body in places that Theo could see and could not, (so many beautiful, terrible colors), and the way he vomited when he couldn’t breathe. The way the tumor in his body clogged up his lungs and heart, leaving no room for anything else. The way Theo turned away while the nurses helped him, telling himself that they had just gotten too hungover, and Boris would stop throwing up soon, and everything would be fine in the morning, everything would be fine—

All of it was supposed to be normal. 

But it wasn’t, and Theo made sure she knew that even thought it meant raising his voice and feeling tears in his eyes. She said nothing, and Theo liked that she did not try to comfort him. They did not talk about Boris dying, because that was impossible. Because Theo should’ve died long before him. Because Boris Pavlikosky could overcome anything.

She has a nice face, sweet but smart. She is nothing like his mother and everything like her at the same time.

“Do you ever go home?” She asks, and the question might sound insulting from someone else, but not her. Only concerned. Theo’s throat tightens. “You’re here day and night.”

She’s right, Theo thinks. And he hasn’t even noticed.

“I lose track of time.” Theo says, faking a sheepish laugh. “Too much time on my hands.”

And not enough for Boris. 

She gives him a sympathetic smile, and when she steps closer, he can see the freckles under her weary eyes. She is a painting, like the Goldfinch, perfect from afar, flawed when you look twice. 

“Theo, right?” She says, and at his questioning expression she explains. “He talked about you all the time when you weren’t here.”

The response makes his head swim, but he keeps up his nonchalant act. Appearances are important, after all. When they are all you have left.

“I can’t imagine him having much to say.” Theo answers.

But he does. And it’s going to drive him crazy (Christ, Boris is going to drive him crazy) wondering what he’s said about him. Maybe Boris thinks about him as much as Theo does. Maybe—

“You have a lot of history, don’t you?” It’s not the question Theo was expecting. _Yes_! He almost yells. So much of it that he’s afraid he’ll burst from it, the years bubbling up inside him, the things he’s done and seen, all slipping away from him. Faces and voices smudged with time, all the things he’s known and does not know. Old times? New times? Nothing matters but the here and now. Nothing matters but Boris. 

So much history in his head. Why doesn’t he try and share it?

He doesn’t. He says none of this. There is the pressure of a calming hand on his, reminding him that the choice is his, whether it’s the wrong or the right one. If he hasn’t told Boris he certainly won’t tell this sweet but wrong woman, who thinks Boris can’t fight off the virus that dangles his life from a thread. Boris has spent his entire life fighting—Theo, Kotku, Xandra, Gyuri, his father, his drugs, The Goldfinch, those guys in Amsterdam, the whole fucking world.

He’s spent his entire fighting, but what has he won?

Theo doesn’t speak. He shrugs instead, and the facade is complete. 

…

Winter in New York is brutal that year. Boris thinks it’s beautiful, even though it’s really not. It’s that awful time of the season where the cold makes a home in your bones and kills all the flowers. 

There are flowers on Boris’s dresser. Roses with a rich scent that brighten the dull room. Boris had laughed when Theo had given them to him. “Roses…? W-what you think…that I’m your redhead?” But Theo had seen the possessive way he clutched the vase to his chest, eyes distant, almost glassy with the morphine they had him on or maybe something else. 

Even in the hospital, they couldn’t keep him off drugs.

Theo asks him if he ever tried to get clean during all these years. God knows he has. Those were the nights that Theo saw Boris the most. He’d be sitting beside Theo during the worst of it, shaking his head when Theo gave in and ran off to get a fix. “You moron,” It looked like he was saying, but Theo pretended not to hear. 

“I…tried.” Boris says, eyes half-lidded. He’s tired, and Theo tells himself that it’s only because it’s getting late. “Unbeatable. Follows me everywhere…like you.” 

Theo isn’t sure what to make of that. He wants to say that up until he’d gotten sick, Boris was the one following him, but he thinks better of it. Boris watches him carefully before smiling and asking him for a drink.

A drink. The bastard wants a drink. 

It’s not like Boris can leave the hospital, shake on his coat, and follow Theo to some beat-up bar, only to stumble home with him, under a sky full of stars, a tangle of hands and limbs and mouths—

Theo swallows the knot of desire in his throat. “You want a drink?” He asks, a little hoarsely. “You can’t have a drink.” 

“Pfft, June-bug won’t know…” Boris says, with his usual air of arrogance. Theo finds a fond smile plastered onto his face. “You love me right…you’d do this for me?” 

Theo has many questions. For one, it’s frigid outside. Jackson Harley had appeared to tell the weather wearing Hello Kitty mittens. Secondly, why does Boris even need a drink? He’s been doing just fine without one.

(If fine means waking up in the middle of the night, gasping into his mask, eyes red from dreams that he tries and fails to ignore. Boris wants to forget. He may not be a black-out drunk, but a man could use some pretending every now and then.)

Third, Theo does love him. He’s willing to play every game for him, cross every line. Theo can get him a drink. It’s just an object anyway. A drink is nothing. 

So, he does as he’s told. He decides to bring Boris a bottle of whiskey—_not the cheap stuff, Potter…I’ll lose my m-mind if you get the cheap stuff, Potter!_ —as long as it _mysteriously disappears _before Boris can have a drink.

When he returns, Boris is waiting for him, perched up on the bed as high as his trembling elbows will allow. His eyes light up with glorious delight.

“Potter…you ass, I t-thought you went to get a smoke!” Boris smirks, a wicked twist of pale lips. “Was…joking about the drink!”

Theo stares, not sure if he wants to punch Boris or kiss him. His numb body decides on neither, flopping into a seat, shaking the white from his hair and jacket. 

Boris stares back. And now Theo can see an entirely different question in his glistening eyes. It’s not _will you get me a drink. _He is saying _you really did that for me. Would you do anything for me?_

_Would you stay for me?_

Theo looks at the strange, pleading look in his eyes until he can’t anymore. All he has is puzzle pieces, and no way to put them together. If Boris beats the virus inside him, then there will be questions to answer. They will have to find some interruption of the constant tragedy, some violent and wonderful kind of peace. It won’t be easy, and eventually they will discover that Hell isn’t someplace beneath them, filled up with fire and brimstone. Hell is right here, and Theo has known for a long time. 

If Boris overcomes this, then they will have to leave. Theo simply can’t imagine a world where they both stay.

…

“…were you happy?” Boris asks one day. Out of the blue. Theo glances away from his book and at him. 

“Hmm?”

Boris puts his half-eaten toast aside. Everything else on the tray he hasn’t bothered to touch. “…your life, N-New York, Pennsylvania…did that make you happy?” 

Theo doesn’t know how to answer. He thinks back to nightmares that got him twisted in the blankets and his grief. Watching his mother torn apart by rubble and waking up in Boris’s arms—only to discover that the waking world was worse than nightmares, and that Boris wasn’t there.

He thinks back to late calls with Pippa, his heart full of a love that would never be reciprocated. His feelings were a dagger that only hurt himself.

He remembers popping pills in his room, with nothing but shadows to keep him company. He remembers longing for New York when he was in Vegas. As if it could be as easy as that, as if your future self would just be waiting for you, sat neatly on your new bed like a freshly ironed outfit left by someone else, ready to be pulled on. Like happiness and wholeness and stability could be found just by changing your physical location.

He remembers getting to New York. He remembers falling apart. 

He thinks about the nights spent flipping through _The Idiot _with the urge to rip and burn it. He wanted to burn _himself_, to mold a new life from the ash, one without suffering and the bursts of agony that accompanied drugs and never letting go. 

He saw his life then. Who he was on his own, and the answer was all too simple. 

He was nothing at all.

“…Potter?”

“Yes,” Theo lies. “I was happy. You know, I really wasn’t going to come back.” He focuses his gaze on the withering roses near Boris, looking there, anywhere but Boris’s eyes which are widening and narrowing at him. A mix of confusion and curiosity that Theo often mirrors and admires. 

He isn’t sure why he says it. It isn’t fair to Boris, but he probably already knew. Theo was being selfish, wrapped up in his own needs, so desperate to live his shelled-up life, afraid to be hurt again. Of course, he hadn’t realized that he had been hurting all along.

“…why not?” Boris asks. Theo stares at him in exasperation. Boris knows this, has known for many years, and Theo has known as well, but they must both be idiots. Does he really need to explain? The look on Boris’s face confirms that he does, and oh, Lord if he has forgotten that then what _does_ he remember? 

“…don’t make that face,” Boris says at his expression. “You just said…you were happy. C-come here.” He pats the space next to him on the bed, and Theo climbs up beside him, head full of the fact that Boris does not remember what happened the last few times they were in bed together—

Or maybe he does remember. Theo pretends not to notice Boris taking his mask off with shaking hands until dry lips are pressed to his own. 

Every thought flies out of Theo’s head, replaced by a pressure that is real and _right here_, and a mind-numbing warmth that for once, isn’t from dirty blankets or wine but _them_. 

Boris pulls away, studying him. His face is soft, having lost it’s hard edges, worn with exhaustion, and close, too close to Theo’s.

“Tell me…” Boris says, a little breathlessly. “T-tell me why.” And Theo does. He tells him about himself, about Kotku and Xandra, his father, Gyuri and Pippa and Hobbie, about beer bottles and late nights, a stalled cab and a brief kiss. He tells him about Russian books and buried feelings, bullet shots and the painting that started it all. Boris listens silently as though Theo is telling a story about someone else. It breaks his heart.

“You loved me…” Boris says at last, and his words could not be more right. “You loved me, then or now, don’t matter…you love me.” 

It’s true, it’s true. He threads one hand through black hair, kissing him until the snowy world outside freezes, and there is nothing but the push and pull of their breath.

They kiss until they can’t anymore, until Boris is gasping, and it takes Theo a moment to realize why. He fumbles for the mask in Boris’s hands, putting it back on him, letting him breathe, one hand lingering near the call button.

“I’m sorry,” Theo whispers, and Boris laughs hoarsely.

“No problem…s’okay,” He says, collapsing backwards onto the bed. His hand nudges at Theo’s and he follows his lead, curling up next to him like a child. “You-you loved me…” Boris repeats. “You loved me, you loved me…and Я любил тебя в ответ.”

Theo doesn’t need Boris to tell him what that means. He closes his eyes, thinking of the cab that pulled them apart, blood on Boris’s arm, fever-dreams in an eerie suite, and being drunk and happy under a sky of a million stars.

“You wouldn’t love me if you remembered me.” Theo whispers. He wouldn’t, not if he could recall how much Theo had hurt him, all of him, in ways that went deeper than a wound. He’s always been a coward, but at least he isn't afraid of death. He hopes he doesn’t remember how Theo would’ve taken his own life a thousand times, if Boris wasn’t there to save him.

But he also remembers Boris’s smile. The way he called him names in a tone that suggested they were compliments. He remembers waking up in Boris’s arms, clinging to him like an urchin, suffocating in his scent. He remembers punching him and Boris kissing him in return. All Theo had given was hate and hurt, only getting love in return. Whatever had happened in the last few years, he had deserved.

He closes his eyes, trying to ignore the fact that he’s sleeping in a slightly larger bed with a slightly larger heart. He pretends not to notice the way Boris’s voice trembles when he says. “…but I would.” 

…

It takes him another two weeks to come to terms with the fact that Boris will not survive this.

He heaves a shaky sob, stares out the window, and thinks, _he’s not the only one_.

...

He shows Boris the copy of _The Idiot_ and his eyes are bright and spectacular, as he takes the book in his hands. 

“I-I remember this,” He says, fervent. “I do, I do…”

Maybe he remembers kissing Theo afterwards, or the rain falling onto both of their faces. Maybe he remembers hushed promises and watching the cab pull away.

“N-never got another one…” Boris reveals, eyes still wide staring at all the creased pages of his youth. “Kept...wishing for the real thing.”

“You don’t say.” Theo smiles. And kisses him. 

…

“I told Pippa about you once,” Theo says. He doesn’t sit at the edge of the bed anymore, instead he’s right next to Boris, bare feet touching. 

Boris hums in response. It keeps getting quieter in the hospital room, and Theo mostly has to fill the empty space. He’s always thought that it would be nice if Boris just listened to him for once, but Jesus Christ it’s not.

“She always wanted to meet you. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.” Theo says, but he did. He was afraid of it. The two loves of his life meeting, and what if they fell for each other, instead of him?

He’s always been selfish, but Boris loves him anyway.

“Sky’s beautiful…” Boris mumbles, eyes closed. “Like Vegas.”

Theo smiles a little, until he realizes that Boris isn’t even looking at the window, instead he’s staring at the whiskey bottle that rests under a chair. He hasn’t taken a sip of it. Theo sees it as a promise. A way to say _I won’t leave you, I won’t. I’d do anything for you. _

Maybe he wants another one, Theo thinks. Another promise. Theo would give him as many bottles as he asked for, arrange for them to be sent in baskets and crates and trucks. As much assurance as he needed.

Boris keeps staring. What Theo finds out later is that now he can barely see.

...

He wakes up one morning to the soft clatter of June-bug setting down Boris's breakfast. The smell of French toast and strawberries is enough to remind him of how long it's been since he's gone to his apartment and eaten. As the days began to bleed into one another, Theo stopped caring. 

He straightens from his cramped position in his chair, which is now where he spends most of his day. He blinks up at June-bug and the room is filled with this hazy, glorious light. 

"You talk in your sleep," She tells him. "Did you know that?"

No, he did not. He hasn't had another person in his bed for years. No one to tell him his glasses were askew, or ask why he wasn't smiling today, or to run their fingers through his hair and tousle it. He felt Boris in his bed sometimes, and the solidity and desperation that came along with it was enough to make Theo believe he was truly there. He'd wake up and see Boris watching him and grinning.

"What's so funny?" He'd ask. They were practiced words. It was a scenario that had happened many times, both real and imagined. 

"Nothing, nothing." He'd reply, running his hands through Theo's hair. Rough skin suddenly soft, like a caress. "Go back to sleep."

Yes, Boris had not told him many things. 

"What was I saying?" Theo asks. He prays he won't be mortified to hear the answer.

"You were saying Boris's name. And the word ‘home." She shrugs. "It all sounded the same."

...

In the end, Theo does get him another drink. June-bug had discovered the first one, and removed it, and Boris had been upset. He heads to the corner store, thinking about attaching some sort of card to the bottle with string. It would have to be funny; Theo muses. And maybe have a dog on the cover. Boris would go crazy for that sort of thing.

He trudges through the biting cold, coat wrapped around him like a second skin. The store is open late at night (it does sell drugs after all) and Theo gets a large one, cradling it in his arms. He feels the phantom pressure and warmth that he’s become so acquainted with and smiles slightly even though his teeth chatter.

The pressure does not go away after a little while, like it normally does. Instead, it accompanies him all the way to the hospital, feeling more real with every passing second.

And then, suddenly, it’s gone.

Theo only gets there in time to see the white of Boris’s hand as they take him away, pale as the snow on his shoulders. Ambulance lights bleed onto the ground in a parade of red and blue, and Theo can’t look away from it all; he’s frozen. Some impossible, broken part of him finds it beautiful.

The bottle drops from his hand and shatters. 

…

The walk to his hotel is slow. Afterwards, Theo won’t remember any of it. 

He stops and stares at the sky for a moment, feeling almost drunk. _It’s beautiful, _He thinks. _It’s so beautiful. Is that where you are, Boris? It’s so, so beautiful—_

He tips over, falling into the snow. He thinks about giving up. Lying there until his toes freeze, then his head, his heart. But he feels a slight pull on the back of his coat, like someone is trying to pick him up, and although he doesn’t want to, Theo lets them.

He’s spent his entire life hating, and ignoring, and shoving his problems under a rug. Meeting Boris meant that he would be lifting the rug up and looking underneath it. There would be no putting it back after that.

He keeps going. His grief stretches into a sob, a scream.

He keeps going.

…

He stays in the hotel for a few more days (feels like weeks) until Pippa drives him back to his old house. There is no talking on the way there. No shyly complimenting her dress, or her eyes, or _her_. Theo is blind to it all. 

When she finally stops the car, she shuts off the radio and there is silence. It wasn't Boris's song, so Theo hadn't been listening, but now the quiet rings louder than anything else.

"Theo," Pippa says, reaching for his shoulder, which was damp from melted snow. He hadn't changed or shaved, hadn't spent an hour in front of the mirror, thinking Pippa would like this, and she would like that and _no, no not that tie_. This is who Theo truly was, the man he saw in the mirror when you pulled away all of the layers and artifice leaving only his hollowed core.

The image wasn't pretty. But it was something he had to live with. 

He opens the car door, gazing at his home. He hasn’t been here in years. It feels more silent and daunting now that his mind is filled with what it’s like not to be alone. He doesn’t want to walk inside. He’s afraid the quiet will swallow him whole like some monster underneath his bed.

The monsters were fake. This is real.

“Yes?” He asks, his voice hoarse. He doesn’t want to talk to her right now. It reminds him of his foolish fears, things he spent his life worrying about and got him nothing in the end. 

“Do you want to meet sometime this week?” She says, her voice dipping off into a hesitant tone. It’s a strange reminder that glorious, fantastic Pippa is just as scared as he is.

“I’d love to.”

He wouldn’t.

Instead, he turns his back on her, and walks into the apartment that tears him into shreds with every step. There are cars honking, people yelling, dogs barking, but it feels like a whole other world. The sounds are distant, distorted, much like a recording of his own life. _Pause, repeat, play. Pause, repeat, play. Pause, pause, pause,__ stop. _

He opens a cabinet and fishes through his records until he finds the right one. He plays the songs from his dreams, his nightmares, the sounds that mixed with Boris’s laughter and kept him awake for days.

He sits and listens until his ears bleed and he can’t hear anything else. 

... 

Hobbie is next to visit.

Theo hears the knock and makes the mistake of opening the door. 

“Theo!” Hobbie says, smelling like cologne and cedar. The smell is comforting and familiar, and Theo almost relaxes, until Hobbie throws a bullet. “What have you been up to?”

Theo opens his mouth and is suddenly without an answer.

Hobbie waits a second too long for him to regain his bearings. “I was...I came back to visit a friend.” 

The words are bitter on his tongue, like betrayal. He remembers Boris holding him close, whispering into his ear. “_You loved me, you loved me_.”, Theo kissing his trembling hands, kissing _him_, inhaling a scent sweeter than the roses on his dresser. All of that, and Theo is still able to look Hobbie in the eye and lie about it.

He was always such a coward.

“Ah, yes Pippa told me about that.” He says. Theo stares, his mind first going blank white like a canvas, before red dripped across it painting him a violent hue. 

“What _else _did she say?” Theo snaps, a tad harder than he wanted to. He thinks he should stop, but he doesn’t. He inches forward, until Hobbie has one foot out the door.

“Only that you might need some help,” Hobbie responds, eyes focused on his, staring him down. Hobbie is strong and kind in every way he’s not. He is not trying to show Theo pity. Compassion is a rare and wonderful thing, but pity is a twisted, self-satisfied version of it, and that is everywhere. Pity comes from people who are glad it isn’t them. 

This wasn’t pity. If you really looked, Pippa and Hobbie were just like him.

“Come to the shop with me,” Hobbie offers. Theo doesn’t think he has a choice, so he does. It’s calming, the cream-colored wood, the gentle sweep of the broom, Hobbie’s voice, and the odd beauty of it all. It reminds him of who he used to be.

He tries to get his life back into order, the ordeal slowly becoming predictable once more. He stays at Hobbie’s most of the day, even when he’s on his own. He doesn’t feel suffocated there until he remembers Boris. After that, his mind won’t be clear for days. Sometimes there’s someone to rub his back when he cries, but usually there isn’t.

He’s used to pain, but he’s never felt anything like this before. It’s searing, blinding, like fire, burning him even though he’s already ash.

He falls back into routine, but it’s not enough. One day, he sets out a line of pills on his dresser, staring at the red, the white, the green. It’s what helps him get through the day, knowing that if he wanted to, he could and there would be no one to save him from himself.

He hasn’t taken them, but every time he remembers Boris, he remembers the pills too. And there isn’t a second where he’s not thinking of him.

...

Pippa takes him out for dinner at this quaint Italian place downtown. The place is packed, and Theo feels cramped among all the people, regularly reminding himself to breathe. The usual desire to impress and astound when he’s around Pippa isn’t there, but he pretends it is. 

_Act normal. _He tells himself. _She won’t like you if you act weird. You want her to like you, don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

“Theo!” She says, waving. “Over here!”

They order some strange pasta, that has too much cheese and too much sauce. His anxiety has suddenly kicked up again at the fact that it’s just the two of them at a table, and what questions Pippa might ask.

“How are your prescriptions going?” He inquires to break some of the tension, twirling the fork with shaking hands. 

“They’re fine,” She says, and then she smiles, and Theo is suddenly struck with how much he loves that smile. The way her eyes crinkle and her mouth curves. He would’ve wanted to kiss that mouth once, her neck, the slant of her nose. But there is a phantom hand on his, less comforting more restricting, telling Theo not to do the thing that he no longer wants to.

Where was this before, when he was head over heels for this woman? Where was it when he gave his heart to a girl who neither wanted nor needed it? Where was Boris when he was busy throwing his life away?

He has to remind himself. I_ left him_. _Not the other way around. _

“I think,” Pippa continues, solemn but sweet. “I might finally be happy. My job is going so well, and I’ve finally taught my boyfriend something about commitment.” She laughs, and Theo manages a weak smile of his own. “I’m not thinking about—well, my therapist calls them negative thoughts. I’m having less panic attacks and, oh I forgot to ask how _you_ were.”

She’s not trying to make Theo feel bad, he knows this. But still a surge of agony seizes him, making it hard to speak. He had thought they were the same for the longest time, having gone through the same thing, but she’s so much better. She’ll be getting better, while Theo will keep sinking into the sand until there’s nothing of him left. 

Maybe it’s the grief that’s making him think like this. Maybe he’s even stupider than he thought.

Still, he pushes his chair back and stands. Pippa reaches out for him, but he is already walking, turning around the corner, gone. 

…

One night, sitting in the middle of his room, high and trembling, he thinks that the reason why he can’t move on, is because of the guilt that weighs him down, quickening his descent. What had he ever done for Boris that actually mattered? He only stayed with him in his days of deterioration, and even then, he wasn’t actually there when he—

Theo sobs, clutching at his hair, rocking wildly. He longs for Boris’s hands on him, his lips, his smile. He wants his voice to break the silence, waits for him to say his name, his real name, breathy like a prayer. 

There are arms around him, but they are not real. Or are they? He can’t tell. He should’ve done something for Boris, should’ve given him everything he had. He hopes there is a boy out there with pretty hands and a pretty face, who is writhing with the terror of what he’s done. He’s taken a life. He’s taken the love of Theo’s life.

(But Theo hadn’t even said—)

_There has to be some way to make it up to you._ He thinks, as if he’d simply said the wrong thing. As if it was a situation that could be resolved so easily, all his sins erased with a few words. 

There has to be some way. Theo believes in nothing but that. There has to be a way, and Theo will stay afloat until he can find it.

For now, he says the only thing he can: _Forgive me, Boris._

_Forgive me._

_Forgive me._

_Forgive me._

...

When the day comes, it catches him by surprise. He is told one hour before it happens, and soon enough he’s speeding downtown in a small yellow cab towards a gathering of mourners and haters and lovers. People who have nothing in common with him and everything at once. People who have all known the hurricane that is Boris Pavlikovsky.

It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he knows he must. When he steps in front of the crowd, in front of the coffin, he wants to disappear. There is no part of himself that wants to do this, but he knows he will never forgive himself if he doesn’t.

He catches Pippa’s eye and is both relieved and upset to see that her eyes look like his own. Sad. She is here for Theo. Maybe Boris was not the only one who understood him.

He sees Gyuri, and Hobbie, and Everett and faces he knows and faces he doesn’t. None of them matter. There is no microphone, so he will have to speak louder than he ever has. He will have to do something that he previously thought was impossible. 

He opens his mouth, and it is not his sorrow that pours out, it is everything: his life, his love, his dreams, those things unsaid over the course of years that left him broken and bleeding and helpless, everything bubbling up inside him and rushing out in a tidal wave of hope that he has never known.

…

“Boris,” He begins. “Never knew how to stop talking.” He sees the endeared smiles on dozens of faces, and his heart clenches with something that is not fear. “He was the problem, he was the solution, and he made me into the man I am today.”

He swallows hard. “I may not be proud of the man I am, but he would be. He always was.” With his words, he feels a growing presence at his side, not a hand or an arm, but a whole _being_. He doesn’t turn his head, because he knows Boris won’t be there when he does.

He keeps talking, and his memories flash across his mind like slides in some sick presentation. Boris and him gazing at a starry night. Waking up to a blanket draped across him when he fell asleep on the sofa, knowing it was Boris’s doing. Boris’s lips on his knuckles, on his mouth. The way he’d gazed at the bottle of whiskey in Theo’s hands, eyes wide with disbelief and love. Washing dishes together in their Vegas home. Talking over the breakfast that June-bug served them. Speaking softly in Russian, when Theo woke up from nightmares, his voice a miracle in the midst of pain.

The white of his limp hand, the smash of a bottle that Theo did not hear. He could not forget that no matter how much he wanted to. To forget that would require surgery; the removal of his mind.

“He loved like no one I’ve ever met. He was brave and strong and bold. He was a literal storm, and if you got on his bad side you definitely weren’t going to leave in one piece.” Someone lets out a hoarse laugh, and Theo smiles, feeling some of the awful tension fade. 

“He’s saved my life more times than I can count. I owe him everything.” Theo says, feeling another burst of agony choking him. He wants him back so much it pains him. He wants to kiss him once more, to dance with him, to laugh with him. But he can’t go back, no one can. All he can do now is try to move forward.

“Boris,” He says, no longer talking to the people, no longer noticing the tear-stained faces, or the sympathetic smiles, or the attentiveness that follows every word. He finally turns, and there stands Boris, all of him, arms crossed and grinning. Transparent and pale, but still a light, a shooting star that he will always be able to follow through the dark.

It has been sixteen long years since the first time he looked into those eyes and the last, and it will never be enough. Boris begins to fade away just as Theo says the words he has always wished and feared for. “I love you.”

...

When he’s finally stepping away from the yard, feeling a hundred years older and younger at once, he spots June-bug, chatting to someone who looks like a relative.

They notice each other at the same time, and the next thing he knows she is running towards him, wrapping her arms tight around his frail body. “I never got the chance to say goodbye.” She says, her mouth moving somewhere over his shoulder. He thinks she might be crying too, judging from the way her voice shakes, but it’s hard to tell. “That was fantastic, Theo. Fantastic. You were so brave.”

_I’ve always been a coward_, Theo thinks, but he doesn’t say. If Boris didn’t believe it, then neither will he. 

Slowly, he wraps one arm around her back, holding her against his chest. They tremble and shiver, getting lost in this warm embrace, in this warm moment. It is times like this, rare as they may be, that remind Theo of the best parts of him. The parts that are still intact, still beating, and still alive.

…

There is a line of pills on his dresser. Sometimes he will sit there and count them. Sometimes he will name the colors of each—_red, white, green_—and often times he will not. 

They make both living and dying easier. It reminds him that if he wanted to, it would be as simple as a swallow.

(But he doesn’t want to. Increasingly, he doesn’t.)

…

On one of his ongoing nights of insomnia, he ends up drinking himself into a terrible hungover and coma-like sleep. When he wakes in the morning, an empty whiskey bottle is resting beneath his chair, and he stares at it for a moment.

An empty bottle, an empty promise.

The best thing about promises though, he thinks, is that you can always make more. 

...

To his surprise, Pippa invites him out once more. This time he chooses the place over the phone, and so they end up having lunch at that bench near Hobbie’s.

This time, he does straighten his tie, and comb his hair down, and tidy his shoes. It’s refreshing, sweet, like Boris’s warm breath on his neck in January. It is not a thought that makes his heart squeeze until he can’t breathe, instead it makes him smile, and he is still smiling when he sees Pippa.

And suddenly, the winter chill is not so cold.

Theo loves Pippa, they both know this. But he doesn’t love her the way he loved Boris, with an encompassing sense of longing that threatened to conquer every other thought, and in the end it did. It still does. He could never love Pippa that way.

He sits down next to her, coats wrapped around them, breaths coming out in smoky puffs. He carries his lunch in a brown paper bag that he sets down on his lap, it’s presence nostalgic like a schoolboy’s lunch, or an old friend. 

(The pressure never leaves now. Theo doesn’t want it to.)

Pippa throws an arm around his shoulders, grinning. Theo tenses, before relaxing into it, because it’s okay. He can let himself have this. “Are you going to run away again?” Pippa teases, her nose near his, cherry-red from the cold. 

“No,” Theo says, meaning it. “I think I’ll stay.” 

…

That night, he has the first good dream in ages.

_They are lying on the sand, basking in the breeze of the Vegas desert, and each other. Boris reaches out and traces Theo’s cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, his jaw. He smiles when Theo shudders under his fingers._

_“Used to be afraid of this,” Boris murmurs with no mask to muffle him, no weariness to weigh him down. “Didn’t know what you’d say.”_

_There is music playing somewhere, only it’s not really music. If Theo listens closely he can hear a cacophony of cheering, laughing, crying, everything at once and the two of them quiet voices among them. But Theo searches only for their melody, and that is the one he listens to, and that is the one he finds._

_“You know now,” Theo replies, shifting to lie closer to him, entwining their hands together. They don’t kiss. But then again, they don’t have to._

_“Yea, I do.” Boris says. “Was always lonely without you.”_

_He goes still for a moment, gazing down at Theo, brows furrowed together. It’s his thinking face. The face that Theo had never ceased to make fun of, the same face that is now such a relief to see. “What are you thinking?”_

_“Thinking about your painting, мой дорогой.” He runs his other hand down to Theo’s side, pulling him close, legs locked together. “Thinking about you.”_

_Theo shivers, burying his face in Boris’s chest. He waits for an answer but is content with Boris drawing circles on his back while he contemplates his response._

_“Your painting,” He says. “Seems more real more I look at it. You go away for a little bit, and come back, and surprise—everything you feel looking for first time happens again.” Theo nods, understanding. The magnificence of the Goldfinch, the infallible novelty of it, was not buried within the painting, instead it was instilled into the eyes of whomever saw it._

_“Same with you,” He continues. “Walk around empty apartment, and see—there’s Theo’s footprints, there he sleeps, there he drinks, there he was total idiot—” He’s interrupted by Theo hitting him in the head, which leads to a short but sweet tickle war. _

_“As I was saying,” Boris rolls his eyes at Theo. “You go away, next you come back. Surprise bigger every time. You’re like the bird, chained, can’t leave.”_

_“Chained to what?” Theo asks, squirming under Boris’s hands in a valiant attempt to leave. Boris laughs, and kisses his forehead, and Theo decides he doesn’t want to get away after all. _

_“Me,” Boris exclaims. Theo stares at him eyes wide. “And I to you. Keep coming back, over and over.”_

_“And now what?” Theo asks, unable to stop the tremble in his voice, the building of emotions that he reveals only to him. “Now you’re free, aren’t you?”_

_Boris hums nonchalantly, his mouth on a tear that tracks down Theo’s cheek. “Ah, maybe.” He says, shrugging that one-shouldered shrug, even as Theo can tell his mood is anything but casual. “But if I'm free, then aren’t you as well?”_

_Theo blinks at him, dumbstruck. The crescendo of voices in the background increase in volume, but it cannot drown out Theo’s heartbeat, which is beating so loudly that he’s sure Boris can hear it. And suddenly, Theo understands, and it’s a car crash, a tsunami breaking across the shore, a final curtain dropping, a _collision_ of all of the planets inside him. The voices reach their highest pitch and go silent, leaving nothing but their thoughts which ring loudest of all._

_He knows._

He knows now. Boris doesn’t belong to Vegas, or New York, or a sky full of stars. Fate is fate, but it cannot tear them apart. They will come back to each other, like waves of the ocean striking the sand, as many times as they need to. They have belonged to each other long before they ever belonged to themselves.

For now, though, Boris drops his hand and smiles. He is leaving. 

Theo lets him go. 

...

He wakes from the dream, sweaty and gasping but alive.

_So, so alive._


End file.
